June 28, 2017

Interview interlude

Nationalist firebrand Katie McHugh gave two interviews recently about the experience of working for Breitbart during the Steve Bannon days, and where the site -- and conservative media generally -- has headed since Trump won. First one with Kevin Michael Grace of 2kevins, and second one with Mike Cernovich for the Alex Jones Show.

Russia scholar Stephen Cohen discusses the historically high level of tension between the US and Russia over the Democrats' conspiracy theories and witch hunts about "Russian interference in the elections," as well as the Pentagon's escalation in Syria. Interviewed by Michael Tracey for TYT Politics.

Lefty journalist Max Blumenthal, along with lefty hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola, delve into the Left's changing stance on Middle Eastern politics -- away from anti-imperialism, and closer to Islamist identity politics. Strangely, even the far Left now champions the Western-backed jihadist rebels who are trying to take down a secular nation independent of Western control -- now in Syria, but formerly in Libya as well. (To me, smells more like CIA co-optation of major commie organizations than naive romanticizing of revolutions.) Conversation at Unauthorized Disclosure, from early May but even more relevant now.

24 comments:

"Good little cuck gets the WaPo (fake news) byline, that's all that matters to these losers who conserved nothing for 5 decades."

That's a great meme we need to push. The Christian Right, the libertarians, and the war whores have basically done nothing to preserve traditional Western culture since the late 60's. The only exceptions being pedophilia remaining stigmatized, and the war on drugs/war on crime which were done with the approval of the Deep State and government at all levels, really, being that they could make lots of money via prison building, prison labor, and they also manipulated the public into granting police/authority at all levels great power to invade houses, take your belongings, arrest you for the most flimsy of reasons, etc.

The liberals are right; we do need to reform the police. What the liberals don't get is that we also need to give blacks and other malcontents in attitude adjustment (via nightstick or even noose if necessary), so as to reduce the level of disorder and crime that gives the state an excuse to exercise paramilitary control over the populace. Just teaching blacks to keep their mouths shut and have proper manners when dealing with authority would go a long way to preventing spooked cops from shooting up threatening blacks.

Back to the original point, telling Silent and Boomer veterans of the culture wars that the conservatives side overwhelmingly failed and we've got to adopt native stock ethnic nationalism to have any chance at victory is what we ought to push. Unfortunately, that would require X-ers and Millennials to once and for all push back against the Boomers. A brave change that younger people are reluctant to openly do (making fun of pompous annoying Boomers online doesn't count).

Disagree about Christian Right. Phyllis Schafly, Pat Buchanan, the Falwells, etc., these guys stopped the ERA, have been in the trenches, and are also natalists: fruitful. Importantly, they tend to be Trumpists. Don't confuse them with the National Review types who are more concerned with their status as intellectuals and than Christian doctrine. There are a few like Ross Douthat who are secure, but so sheltered that he doesn't see the real world results of his economic/government theories.

The ERA was defeated on economic grounds, though, not social/cultural/religious. They appealed to working-class women about how much of a burden they'd be shouldering if they were held to the same standards as men -- having to lift the same weight if they were stocking shelves, having to work nights alone if they were cashier at a gas station, getting signed up for the military draft, etc.

Those working-class women did happen to be more religious, but the argument was not religious, it was class-based.

At the other end, the hardcore supporters of the ERA were all upper-middle class women with professional or managerial jobs. They were the ones using cultural and values-based arguments.

"Those working-class women did happen to be more religious, but the argument..."

Only slightly related...God, I love the working class Trumpist press and people. Cassandra Fairbanks literally has a scoop from a secret service agent tonight that Hillary crapped her pants and that's why she collapsed on 9/11.So mean! But I can't stop crying and wheezing!!!https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/880246137265037313

I apologize, but now President Trump himself just this morning came close to topping Cassandra. Again, I apologize. I know the day will come when the cucks of Conservative Inc. who fashion themselves to be oh so intellectual will learn to relax and enjoy, but that day has not come*:

*They're in complete contrast to the liberals who at least make a good show of pretending that Hip Hop singers are erudite(!) and never put down the much lesser intelligent colored people in their coalition for being lower class. They have a much healthier respect (too healthy, actually), in a situation where it is even *much* harder to feign interest and respect. The nervous ninnies will come around eventually.

They still don't get it. The West Coast lashing out at the Christian Right by voting Dem was already well under way by 1988 (Oregon and WA, once solid Republican states, voted for Dukakis and Bush had a meager victory in '88). It wasn't immigration or non-whites (last I checked, probably a good 90% of Oregon voters in '88 were white), but growing fatigue at the GOP's pandering to fundies. The West Coast has always been the most culturally liberal; Reagan became popular in the 60's/70's because pre-late 1980's, much of the West Coast liked the GOP because of muh small government.

I find it strange that the Christian Right alienating the Western US has been retconned into the GOP offing itself by not doing enough to stop immigration. Oregon remains heavily white, and they overwhelmingly voted against Trump because late Boomer/Gen X/Millennial whites on the West Coast care less about small government these days and more about giving the finger to sanctimonious cultural conservatives. New England is the other region with a lot of anti-fundie whites, although they were slower to abandon the GOP than the West Coast.

Pat Buchanan is a notable exception to the 70's/80's/90's dominant strains of mainstream conservatism. His focal points of economic nationalism, war skepticism, and immigration limits were the exception, not the rule, when he was still young enough to have more of an impact. His allegiance to the Christian Right, such as it was (he focused more on NAFTA than Roe v Wade in 1992), fit with the GOP back then, but that wing gained strength yet did nothing to improve America's trade, immigration, or war policies.

Truth be told, on a local level, the Dems continued to do pretty well in the Rust-belt, the Midwest, and even Appalachia well into the 90's. Why? Because more Democrats voted against NAFTA.

I'm about halfway through listening to Katie's interview on Kevin Michael Grace's podcast and she's pretty good. I'm not surprised at all about the current state of Breitbart post-Bannon. Really illuminating bit from her about how Bannon loved Camp of the Saints which made certain others there -- and it should be obvious who -- uncomfortable. Combine that with her GotNews/Medium article right after getting fired and some of the stuff Lee Stranahan's been talking about and the circumstances that led to his firing and its obvious that post-Bannon the site should be referred to as Cuckbart. I'd heard Stranahan mention that he'd had a story killed right before he was fired, had no clue it was related to the Twin Falls cultural enrichment which is very disheartening. Guys like Alex Marlow and Matthew Boyle are gutless weasels and should really be treated as such.

Though this also does segue a bit into the larger schism it seems is brewing on the right. Mainly the keyboard Nazis and their hatred of the "Alt-Lite". On one hand I have the feeling nothing will come of it, the keyboard Nazis tried earlier to ruin Liters like Cernovich when he dared be critical of Richard Spencer and the more ethnonationalist section and that didn't really take. But my worry is that the keyboard Nazis seem to be getting angrier at the Liters. It really does take me back to when Spencer first showed up and my thoughts at the time which only solidify as time goes on. The guy seems to relish playing up every negative media stereotype associated with the Alt-Right to the to the point where he's either controlled opposition or a buffoonish and toxic attention whore though those two aren't mutually exclusive.

The Alt-Right is now the escapist, anti-social, utopian cyber-commune within the Right. So, not a threat to the Establishment, but also not a threat to the rest of the Right either.

Their specialty during the campaign was meme warfare against the Left, but that war has largely been won. Now even progs, Leftoids, and ex-SJWs are jumping ship on the whole identity politics thing, with the materialists focused on class/empire finally coming out into the open, and Skepticism-Atheism Inc. turning on the SJWs who lost them the election.

Black Lives Matter, etc., evidently got de-funded after the election, with those funds re-directed toward removing Trump from office. And the Deep State is not going to be BTFO'd by Pepe memes or invasion of comment sections.

Destroying media credibility, including that of neocons, is now being done by the "Lite" and by the pro-Trump mainstays from the Conservative Movement, like Ann Coulter.

Those who were in the hazy inchoate Alt-Right, who did not resist the take-over of the zealous minority of white nationalists / identitarians, are going to get absorbed into the gay orgy blob which that part of the Right has become since the election (kicking things off with high-profile non-ironic Hitler salutes, and Trump non-ironically disavowing them).

The other reason not to worry about the Alt-Right is that they're limited to young people who will either mature out of transgressive lifestyle politics, or will get burned out from seeing everyone else mature out of it.

It's like the lifestyle anarchists on the Left.

"But young people are the future" -- no they're not. They are always weakly engaged in any given moment, and they only portend the future when the youth is broadly moving in some new direction.

Bernie supporters are a broad trend among young people, and that will grow over time, with these folks staying that way well into middle and old age.

Trump youth focused on strong borders, deportation of illegals, re-building American industries, getting a good standard of living with minimal debt, etc., is only going to grow as they enter middle and old age.

White nationalism has never been popular with middle or old-aged people throughout history, unlike Teddy Roosevelt style nationalist populism or Scandinavian socialism. It will remain confined to 20-something libertarians in highly diverse areas.

"The other reason not to worry about the Alt-Right is that they're limited to young people who will either mature out of transgressive lifestyle politics, or will get burned out from seeing everyone else mature out of it."

It was all fun 'n games until they got Trump elected, or so thought much of the Bona Fide Left. Whether true or not, the liberal powers-that-be acted on this belief and *Shut. It. Down.* on twitter. The kids will always be able to look back fondly on that; amazing way to go out.

And yet the Arch-Gay Whoosh himself never got banned from Twitter -- only the effective, heterosexual ones like Ricky Vaughn and Pax Dickinson.

They've just shadow-banned the big Alt-Liters -- Cernovich, Watson, Southern, although not Posobiec. If you're browsing Twitter without an account of your own, and put their names into the search box, their accounts never come up as suggestions. You have to do the actual search and pick their account.

"If you're browsing Twitter without an account of your own, and put their names into the search box, their accounts never come up as suggestions. You have to do the actual search and pick their account."

Funny you mention that because that's what I do and I was surprised a couple days ago at whose account was no longer coming up: @redsteeze (Stephen Miller, member of the Bona Fide Right, not Trump's guy). He's not as based as Ace of Spades HQ (Baby Goat Alliance) who's also a member of the BFR, but he just very recently started becoming a little more based, less cucky, due to the Scalise shooting. Seems Miller got just a little too angry for Twitter about the lib who shot up the baseball field.

You know, slightly curious about the way this works... Miller had called out a lib journalist over Scalise and my own censoring on there came about immediately after I had scalded a blue check mark journo. Not hateful, but harsh and pointed. Funny enough, though Miller's nemesis wasn't the one I scalded, he would have seen it as he was in the reply. Could he have been the narc for both of us? Doesn't matter. Anyway, ostensibly, mine was over a picture that I carefully cropped to make *less* gory -not gory- so as to capture a woman's humanity; meanwhile the uncropped gory photo was spreading on twitter. I went back and looked at numerous accounts who posted the gory photo and got numerous retweets: no censor or anything. I had fewer than 400 followers, so it wasn't like Twitter was perceiving me as some trail blazer of influence or creativity like Ricky Vaughn, Menaquinone, and the boys. Just a stay-at-home mom.

I imagine Twitter may have a system that pushes all reports from the blue checkmark accounts to the top of its priority list, and also that it might be assigning its actual moderators to review the checkmarks' reports while feeding everyone else's reports through some kind of automated system.

Twitter is very thin on hiring policy, their whole customer service phoneline is just a recorded message that redirects you to use their email reporting system.

Spencer's account did get shut down once some months ago but reinstated after it generated a bit of news coverage. They've kept his NPI account shut down ever since.

Twitter has been screwing with us for a long, long time, and it's not helpful that their code is also riddled with glitches so at times it's unclear whether you're being targeted for censorship or just on the receiving end of some technical glitch. Brings to mind those stories about Mossad breaking into their targets' apartments and just misplacing a shoe to stir paranoia. My original account got above 10K followers and I do remember it being messed with a few times, as well as on subsequent smaller ones shortly before they ended up banned.

For what it's worth though, David Duke has never had his account banned, even in the post 11/8 purged where they were zapping thousands of alt-right accounts (especially the ones associated with TRS, the Stormer, etc.)

My theory was always that these bans were being driven by lists compiled by ADL/SPLC types and that they might actually want Duke around since he was their go-to bogeyman to demonize Trump by association during the election.

There is this other theory I have though, which is that there might just be a critical point of follower size, name recognition, and media connections above which Twitter simply will not ban an account for fear of the backlash and bad publicity it generates.

Banning Milo is an obvious exception but may have been the case that established this policy, since it ended up talked about throughout network news.

No one they've shoahed since has been someone even close to Milo Yiannopoulous in terms of mainstream recognition. Who are the highest profile scalps they've claimed since? Maybe Pax Dickinson on the alt-lite and Mike Enoch on the alt-right? Neither even remotely comparable to Milo in terms of name recognition.

Who could they ban that would be on par with Milo? Mike Cernovich, Paul Joseph Watson, Lauren Southern, and Alex Jones are all big and well-connected enough to cause a stir in the major media and public attention if they were removed. So is Richard Spencer, by virtue of having been elevated to archvillain status in the media. The guy coughs in public and reporters will cover it.

Fear and indecision are factors on Twitter's decision-making we are likely underplaying. Remember they are trying to salvage a stock price that's been tanking for years; any sort of controversy reflects badly on their stability as an investment to potential buyers.

Also important to note: Twitter's censorship policy is reactive, not proactive.

Milo'a ban only came after months of continuous agitation and calls for his head from leftist activists, the same with Chuck Johnson, the same with Ricky Vaughn, the same with the alt-right in general.

People forget what a Wild West that site was during the election season, having grown so used to the new state of affairs. I could send oven memes to anyone without a second thought, someone getting banned was rare enough to be a big blip on the radar to us even if was just a 1- or 2K follower account.

Twitter has always been nervous and reluctant to stir controversy by banning high profile accounts, ultimately caving only when leftist complaints to major media outlets about trolls, hate speech, etc. grew strong enough for censorship and band to be the lesser of two controversies.

Even then, they implemented a system driven primarily by user-based reporting, trying to deflect as much of the responsibilty for policing speech as possible onto its users.

Give me moderator powers and I as a one-man task force could wipe out 90-95% of the alt-right (and the alt-lite) in one weekend.

Anyone with a frog photo or emoji, anyone with Kek-anything, anyone with alt or fash or pro white or deplorable, any hit delete. Twitter already has a built-in system to expedite this through its "You may want to follow..." feature that will highlight related accounts (and it is a very well-functioning system, I've been able to rebuild 90% of my core friend networks within an hour after ban returns just by following it).

If Twitter really wanted to wipe us out, they could do it without breaking a sweat, just as easily as Israel could clean out the Gaza Strip with a few tactical nuclear air bursts.

Except that Israel has never taken the nuclear option, and neither has Twitter, because there would be consequences to both.

My method would guarantee a wipeout of all pro-Trump news, activism, and effective support on Twitter (and a long-lasting one too, just reapply daily - just as easy to find everyone who comes back through the same methods as long as they keep refollowing each other). But it would also come with an enormous amount of collateral damage, would be an undisguisable outrage against half of America (not just a few internet Nazis or conspiracy theorists but all Republican voters), and would strike down a few targets with enough media and popular political clout to lead a major backlash against Twitter (i.e. Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, etc.)

It's really this broader institutional factor (fear of unforeseen consequences and innate preference towards inertia until fear of leftist agitation outgrows that fear of consequences) that we should be focusing on as the primary force shaping Twitter's policies of who gets banned and who stays, not whether it's Mike Cernovich or Richard Spencer or whichever individual personality is their controlled opposition / useful idiot.

And the multiplier A is Access; how effectively would that following be able to rally and spread their message of outrage to the public?

Linda Suhler, grandmother for Trump may have just as many followers on Twitter and get just as much engagement as Mike Cernovich, but Mike Cernovich has an open door at InfoWars and is a household name to everyone who follows Trump-related news online, while Linda Suhler's are Republican soccer moms with no real political connections.

Linda Suhler though is still better off in A than someone like Mike Enoch, who may get 100,000 regular listeners on Daily Shoah but is someone that Breitbart, etc. wouldn't touch with a 50' pole (whereas they might give Linda a sympathetic page or two).

So in the case of Cernovich, B = E / (FA), Cernovich has a high amount of Evil but it's offset by a high Following x Access quotient.

Richard Spencer's Evil is higher and his Following is smaller, but his Access is actually higher because there's a rebound once you're notorious enough that they start to give you an outraged headline when you go outside and say the sky is blue (Trump was obviously a big time beneficiary of this, on a scale orders and orders of magnitude higher).

Ricky Vaughn? High Evil, decent Following, very little Access at all.

Sean Hannity? All the Following and Access in the world. But very little Evil.

And if you want to start quantifying Evil, it will look like Moh's Scale of Hardness. On the far right after an exponential upward curve is White Nationalism and Anti-Semitism, the diamond standard of evil.

Anti-LGBT is your corundum, next one down but not even remotely close.

Followed at 8 by anti-black racism.

Islamophobia scores a 7, this is where you're starting to leave the danger zone in America (still well within it in Europe). Say the words kike, faggot, or nigger and you're gone instantly; what can you call a Muslim that will guarantee the same, besides sandnigger? Notice this is the line Trump sets for himself, he's not afraid to criticize anything up to Islam but he's always been very mindful to stay polite to everyone above them - always "African Americans," always "LGBT....Q", nothing even approaching a 10.

All other racisms and religious bigotries a 6, little risky but won't set off alarms nearly as quickly as anything above.

Anti-feminism / misogyny is a 5, quite a bit higher in the workplace but online it's pretty safe. Unless they can frame you as a rape apologist, that goes to an 8 or a 9.

4 is being pro-Assad, pro-Russia, etc, you won't get banned for it but you will be filtered into fake news / conspiracy theory. In fact, anything focused on Deep State is a 4.

3 is outspokenly advocating Trump policies (wall, tariffs, etc.)

2 is being a Ted Cruz or Tea Party style Republican.

1 is being a regular GOP businesscuck.

So you can judge how at risk someone really is of getting banned by how high they score on this chart and then thinking about how big a stir it would cause if they got banned (twitter hashtag outrage < alternative news outrage < major media headlines < cable news coverage).

"Also important to note: Twitter's censorship policy is reactive, not proactive."

Thank you for succinctly summing up the point of my anecdote. Julian Assange, in a recent twitter rant, also visited this them of twitter censorship: the ethos of the owner and twitter's reactive, censorial nature will inevitably reward the "powerful" at the expense of the "powerless". Neoliberalism wins, basically.--------In case y'all missed it, Greg Cochran over at his West Hunter blog had this throw-away line last week:

"For Trump, this scheme has the added benefit of subjecting many of his least favorite people to death by adrenal exhaustion."

When I wrote the above, I was completely unaware, and just learned, about the CNN scandal of them hunting down the Reddit satirist and exhorting an apology from him for making the Trump wrestling gif (!!!!!)

CNN:CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.After Trump tweeted the video on Sunday, "HanA**holeSolo" took to Reddit to say he was "honored," writing "Holy s—!! I wake up and have my morning coffee and who retweets my s—post but the MAGA EMPORER himself!!! I am honored!!" MAGA is an acronym for the President's campaign slogan: Make America great again."http://archive.is/o7izm#selection-1233.0-1233.73(h/t: @wikileaks)

Reminds me a bit of the Kathy Griffin beheading where she was so esconced in her fringe milieu, she had no idea how untethered she actually was. You see DC twitter and the like and well... it's no surprise that they wouldn't realize how utterly thuggish they've become. They see themselves as virtuous when few other people do, even the people on *their* side. And to maintain their grip on power and credibility, they are reduced to going after someone who in all likelihood is a kid, and threatening humiliation over a very silly gif.

Scott Greer put it best:"The CNN threat shows the primary concern of the establishment media is policing the public, not informing us."https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottMGreer/status/882423879750299650

This is inherently abusive. "Gaslighting", originally used to describe psychologically/emotionally abusive in romantic relationships, has now become one of the most well-known tools the media uses against the public. Even the politically disengaged and uninterested hate the media. How awful does an institution have to be to manage that?!

Ostensibly it's for the "anti-semitic" picture they found that pointed out how many of the Tribe's people work for CNN more likely but yes the reality is the WWE gif. This is something that should be condemned by everybody, right or left, because a massive news organization blackmailing someone by threatening to expose their identity to the world leaving them open to violent reprisal (not at all impossible after a Bernie supporter, brainwashed by the MSM, tried to assassinate Republican congressmen) is so beyond that pale that anyone should see how horrific that is.

But I already know the left and the scum sucking journalists are going to be crowing about how he "got what he deserved".

Something needs to be done. I think Agnostic brought it up in an earlier entry but kicking CNN from the WH press corp permanently is a good first step as would be getting their broadcast license revoked. In an ideal world they'd find out who, exactly, at CNN played a part in this and arrest them while giving CNN a massive fine on top of all of that too.

"But I already know the left and the scum sucking journalists are going to be crowing about how he "got what he deserved"

The DC journolist 2nd tier types, yes; it's my understanding this K-File guy ran in those circles. Everyone else? No.That's partly why it reminds me of the Kathy Griffin episode.This thing is so over-the-top that it's hard to believe it's real. A lot of people actually thought it was satire or a parody. Nope, it was real (behold the power of group think and hermetically sealing one's self off from anyone who isn't part of the ingroup). Like Kathy Griffin holding a bloodied Donald Trump head. Then, it gets exposed to sunlight and Holy Jesus!

Who knows if he's 15, but again, this points to how untethered and estranged from reality these people are: most shit poasters are kids! This is obvious to anybody and everybody. Sure, many aren't, but the majority are *and it's obvious to anyone who gives them a passing glance*.

But if you're the Salem witch hunter*, you're probably blind to this, and if made to see, well it's a trifling detail.

*I have an ancestor jailed during the Salem witch hunt: she was an old woman in her sixties at the time. Her son-in-law took her daughter and their family (also my ancestors) and moved away to get away from the craziness. When it died down, and the woman and everyone else was released, they moved back. In history classes, we always focused mainly on the young women who were burned, but it was far, far more involved and far reaching than that.